Meaning: Accompanying, happening at the same time or as a result of something else.

Notes: Today's word is the adjective of the unfortunately rarely used verb concomitate "to accompany" (the symptoms that concomitate flu). The noun, concomitance "coexistence, accompaniment", has a special meaning in the history of the Catholic Church: the presence of Christ's body and blood in either the bread or the wine in the Eucharist. One without the other is inconceivable. The adverb is concomitantly and, OK, go ahead and say concomitancy for the noun it you must.

In Play: Today's word is ambiguous as to whether the two concurring events are causally related or not: "Everyone noticed the inkspot on Gridley's hand concomitant with the announcement that the gold-plated pen was missing." The ambiguity is in this sentence, too, "Grinding poverty concomitant with fabulous wealth is a cause for continuing concern among thoughtful people."

Word History: Today's Good Word has an interesting history in that it is derived with the prefix com "with, together" from a word that was itself derived with the same prefix. It comes from the Late Latin stem concomitant-, the present participle of concomitari "to accompany" from com- "with, together" + comitari "to accompany". Comitari comes from the stem comit- "companion" from com- + it- "go", i.e. someone you go with. The "go" root also turns up in iter "journey" which underlies our itinerary and itinerant, and continues to exist pretty much unchanged in the Russian verb, id-ti "to go/come". (We are indeed happy that Luis Alejandro Apiolaza, Uncronopio of the Alpha Agora, brought this useful and lovely word to the word market there.)

Dr. Goodword wrote:, concomitance "coexistence, accompaniment", has a special meaning in the Church: the presence of Christ's body and blood in either the bread or the wine in the Eucharist. One without the other is inconceivable. The adverb is concomitantly and, OK, go ahead and say concomitancy for the noun it you must.

That would be the RC church, none of the Protestant Churches I attended (joined and received instruction in)believes that. To them it is purely symbolic. A representation, part of a rite in remembrance.

I was a very active Church of Sweden (CoS, Evangelical Lutheran, though not very evangelical in the way a USAmerican would understand that label) member for several years (including being the one openly Christian in senior high class). I've heard several hundreds of sermons, and I attented Bible study groups, and whatever. My firm impression was that Catholics were crazy, believing in transubstantiation. [Linguistic comment: it's transsubstantiation in Swedish.] I never got the idea that the wafer and wine were anything but symbolic to my Church.

Imagine the shock when I, when taking Religious Studies, finally tried to read the Symbolic Books of the CoS in a reflecting, neutral way, and found that they repeatedly and unmistakeably stated, for example in the Augsburg Confession, that the real and true blood and flesh of Christ are present together with the foodstuffs. At least for a chemist, it is quite disturbing trying to imagine blood and flesh molecules interspersed with the bread and wine ones.

<RANT WARNING>
I find an interesting parallel with some other reasons that made me a confessing atheist. When I began developing an active interest in South Asian languages, cultures and religions, I was amused by the silly notions that gods (partially?) left their heavenly abodes to walk on earth, like the avatars of Vishnu, and I was really irritated by the unscientific idea of reincarnation. Somehow, my NT teacher managed to instil some critical thinking in me. So, I realized that I believed that 1/3 of my (then) God had gotten down to earth, and that I was expecting one reincarnation. To be consistent, I obviously had to reject my previous beliefs together with the SA ones.</RANT>